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Yes please lets have a semantic debate in which no one defines their terms
Science routinely solves problems like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51
In some sense this is the very heart of science: taking disparate views of the world and drawing likely conclusions that are testable and reproducible.
The only thing you know is that you know nothing. Really a pointless conversation unless you wanted to circle jerk on Lemmy. oh wait
How we go about living our lives on only partially-available and unreliable information is one of the most practical and important questions of all! Who do we trust? What assumptions should we make?
It’s funny you bring that up, I offer a 6-week course on who to trust and what assumptions you should make!
The twist:
It’s actually a flat piece of paper.
How very Escher of you…
Ceci n’est pas une pipe
The object’s ness is objective. The projection is your own dumbass ways of perceiving it because you lack the ability to objectively observe.
Because you used ness, i instantly thought of Loch Ness and imagined that there is a duck that lives in that loch whose shadow was randomly made huge by a boats light one evening resulting in the proceeding mania. Thus leading to the highly confusing situation for Duck Ness of waddling about telling people she’s who they’re looking for while they ignore her or threaten to put her in a pie.
Exactly why it’s only $3.50
truth isn’t subjective, but perspective changes how you see something.
Truth is entirely subjective because all observations are subjective.
I’m 14 and this is deep.
Sure, we can think there’s no way to actually know anything because your mind could have made up everything that happened before this moment. That’s a stupid way to interact with the world though. It doesn’t help you do anything thinking that way and only makes everything pointless, including conversing with you for people who don’t even believe this.
What about a thermometer?
mine says 0° but yours says 32°
Gogo gadget boltzmann brain
Aurora borealis?
The whole truth?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localised entirely within your brain?
Yes!
…Can I see it?
. . . No.
truth=facts. facts are objective. it’s a fact that the USA is a country in north America. there is no disputing that.
the notion that the USA is a good place to live is not a fact, it’s a subjective opinion
truth=facts. facts are objective. it’s a fact that the USA is a country in north America. there is no disputing that.
Not trying to say that everything is subjective, but that in particular is kind of a bad example.
Countries are socially constructed. The US is something that only exists so long as people agree that it does. There is no objective, material way of determining where one country ends and another begins.
In fact, there was quite a bit of disputing that historically. Prior to the American Civil War, lots of people said that the US was not a country but a union between countries, they were called “states” after all, and it was common to say “The United States are” rather than “The United States is.” There are still successionists today who argue for that interpretation. To say that the US is objectively a country means that there must be something in material reality that we can point to to prove that one interpretation is correct and the other is incorrect. What is that thing?
Whatever that thing is would have significant implications for how we see the world and look at other disputes, whether we’re talking about Spain and Barcelona, the UK and Scotland, China and Tibet, or Israel and Palestine. For example, if you say that historically, most US secessionists supported slavery and therefore they lacked moral character and the position is illegitimate, then it follows that what states exist is a function of the moral character of their supporters, and that seems to be adding lots of assumptions and moving away from any sense of objectivity.
“The US exists” is much more subjective than something like “This chair exists.” With the latter, you could argue that grouping a collection of atoms into the category of “chair” is arbitrary and there’s no way of determining when an atom stops being a part of “chair,” but that’s much more pedantic than socially constructed concepts that don’t really have a physical essence.
people created the ideas of countries, then made a list of them. USA is on that list.
if you really want to get philosophical about it, you can say the only fact that anyone knows for sure is that they are experiencing something. Nobody knows for sure that everyone else in the world isn’t an NPC, nor whether this world is real or a hallucination.
I’m trying to keep it simple for the purposes of this argument
people created the ideas of countries, then made a list of them. USA is on that list.
People? Which people? If I get a bunch of people and declare a micronation within what the US considers it’s borders, is that objectively a country or not? Or suppose I convince a bunch of Americans that Germany isn’t really a country, does it then cease to be a country despite what the Germans themselves believe?
In any case, I would think that if something falls under the standard of, “This is true because a bunch of people say it is, even though there’s nothing physical you can point to to prove it” then it seems somewhat absurd to call that an “objective fact” What do “objective” and “subjective” even mean, then?
I’m not interested in arguing semantics or philosophy. you can disagree with my example, I don’t care.
the point is, there are objective facts and subjective opinions.
I see, so you’re only interested in asserting your own philosophical positions, not examining or defending them in any way.
What if someone doesn’t recognize it as a country? Or what if they believe that there’s no north america, that there’s only one american continent?
A fact is something that can be proven.
“I love my wife” is the truth, but it’s not a fact, since we can’t really measure “love”.
Descartes wants a word…
It’s rather curious how those people who claim truth is subjective never do it for gravity, jumping off a high building while claiming “gravity is false for me”. Because guess what, odds are they know it’s bullshit.
You might have to goad them a bit with “it’s only a theory”
I doubt you’ve come across someone who claims that all truth is subjective all the time in all scenarios.
The example you give isn’t an example of subjective truth, it’s an example of wilful/conscious control of reality, which isn’t the same thing.
I also doubt you’ve met anyone that claims truth is subjective to their will at any time they choose.
It’s entirely possible, but unlikely.
Someone on earth vs someone on the ISS have different gravitational experiences for instance.
I doubt you’ve come across someone who claims that all truth is subjective all the time in all scenarios.
I wish I could say I’ve never came across this sort of muppet. But… *sigh*
The example you give isn’t an example of subjective truth, it’s an example of wilful/conscious control of reality, which isn’t the same thing.
Wilful control of reality in this case requires truth to be subjective; and conversely, if truth is subjective you can control reality. You’re right they aren’t the same thing, but they’re clearly tied.
Someone on earth vs someone on the ISS have different gravitational experiences for instance.
The experience is different because the person in the ISS is simply not close enough to Earth to be subjected to Earth’s gravity, in any practical amount. But that doesn’t mean gravity stopped existing for them.
Wilful control of reality in this case requires truth to be subjective
Hmm, maybe. Others have covered this and it doesn’t quite seem perfectly true, but let’s let that slide.
and conversely, if truth is subjective you can control reality
No, that definitely doesn’t follow. If truth is subjective it doesn’t at all mean you can control it. It just means that what is true for you might be different from what is true for me. The reason that’s the case isn’t a part of that equation.
The experience is different because the person in the ISS is simply not close enough to Earth to be subjected to Earth’s gravity, in any practical amount.
It sounds like someone still hasn’t played KSP! Play it! It’s great. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll have fun doing it.
Stuff doesn’t stay in orbit because there isn’t gravity. It stays there because it’s moving sideways while it’s falling down, so it doesn’t hit the thing it’s orbiting. Without gravity it’d be able to just sit in space wherever it wants. Rockets mostly don’t go up, they go sideways. There wouldn’t be a geosyncronus orbit as all orbits would allow you to just sit above any location you want. A geosyncronus orbit is one that the amount it has to move sideways is, in degrees from the center of earth, the same amount the earth rotates.
Someone on earth vs someone on the ISS have different gravitational experiences for instance.
The experience is different because the person in the ISS is simply not close enough to Earth to be subjected to Earth’s gravity, in any practical amount. But that doesn’t mean gravity stopped existing for them.
Ooh, time for science pedantry! The ISS is plenty close enough to Earth to experience almost the same gravity from the planet as on its surface, which is why it has to be orbiting at such speed - falling sideways fast enough and at the right angle so as not to come crashing down!
I wish I could say I’ve never came across this sort of muppet. But… *sigh*
Yeah…
Wilful control of reality in this case requires truth to be subjective; and conversely, if truth is subjective you can control reality. You’re right they aren’t the same thing, but they’re clearly tied.
Not really…to any of that.
There’s no reason gravity control requires a subjective truth.
An unusual level of reality control could exist within an objectively truth based system. It would just have to adhere to the constraints.
Perhaps you mean omnipotence? I’m not sure on that one either, but definitionally it usually implies complete control, im not sure if that’s within a fixed system or not.
Reality control and subjectivity can be tied if an example ties them somehow, but it’s not a given.
The experience is different because the person in the ISS is simply not close enough to Earth to be subjected to Earth’s gravity, in any practical amount. But that doesn’t mean gravity stopped existing for them.
Yep, that’s why I went with gravitational experience instead of one having gravity and the other not.
There’s no reason gravity control requires a subjective truth.
In this case, it does.
Let me put it this way: is the statement “there’s a phenomenon called «gravity», experienced by all massive bodies, that accelerates them in relation to other massive bodies” epistemically true?
If truth was subjective, the answer would be “true” or “false” depending on the subject. For those whom the answer is “false”, this means they would not experience the phenomenon, even in situations other subjects would; e.g. near Earth. That implies they’d have at least some control over experiencing gravity, because they could simply say “it’s now true for me” and fall, or “it’s now false for me” and stop falling.
Let me put it this way: is the statement “there’s a phenomenon called «gravity», experienced by all massive bodies, that accelerates them in relation to other massive bodies” epistemically true?
Scientifically, maybe? Because that’s what the scientific method is, best approximations given the knowledge we currently have.
But let’s assume yes for the purposes of this reply.
If truth was subjective, the answer would be “true” or “false” depending on the subject.
And context.
Same subject different circumstances, different gravitational forces.
For those whom the answer is “false”, this means they would not experience the phenomenon, even in situations other subjects would; e.g. near Earth.
That’s a binary interpretation of a non-binary system.
But again, for the purposes of this reply, sure.
That implies they’d have at least some control over experiencing gravity, because they could simply say “it’s now true for me” and fall, or “it’s now false for me” and stop falling.
There’s a big assumption there that this is a binary.
Gravity control, doesn’t have to be binary.
It doesn’t even have to be direct, they could achieve the same effect by increasing or decreasing mass.
But let’s say it’s magic, direct control.
In an objective system where gravity exists it would conceptually be possible to control the level of gravity acting upon yourself without turning it on or off.
I’m a subjective system where gravity could exist or not depending on subject and context, the same is true.
Which brings me back to:
There’s no reason gravity control requires a subjective truth.
Emphasis mine.
The fact that people feel different gravitational pull based on where they are doesn’t make the concept of gravity different for each of them. You’re just using the wrong word to describe the acceleration produced by gravity, rather than gravity itself.
That’s why technical definitions (so we speak the same language) and education (si we understand that language) are important!
I see you have cleverly noticed there is a 3D object in the meme image that is casting both projections.
This argument is one that is very, very difficult to have because it veers too closely to people’s first principles.
On one side, we have people who know they are forced by reason to believe in all truths that appear before them.
And on the other, we have people who have decided they will choose to believe in all truths that appear before them.
Like, it’s just a semantic difference. Nobody on the subjectivity side, nobody rational anyway, disagrees with the concept of gravity, we are just simply aware of our power as fallible human beings to destructively choose not to.
That said, there is something very dangerous about being in the second group of people, but thinking you’re among the first. And frequently, it becomes a problem when science brushes up against cultural fields it has more trouble explaining.
It is not always possible to see the 3D object. The ability to recognize that two groups can both be ‘correct’, like in a Newtonian way, even when they disagree with each other is a very useful skill.
Truth
Subjectively?
Speculative and Technical
The best kind of technical.
Correct!
Personally, I don’t believe in football.
In Einstein’s general relativity, different observers can disagree about the order of timed events, so long as their individual stories don’t violate causality. This is broadly known as the Relativity of Simultaneity.
Sure, if you’re traveling near the speed of light. For everyone on Earth, no one has ever experienced this (beyond a micro level that doesn’t matter and no one is discussing).
At relative speeds, yes. Why do you think I disagree with this?
[Warning: bar philosophy. Might include ramblings, booze, chain smoking, and fried snacks.]
And yet, gravity is still there.
Even if simultaneity is relative, the phenomenon is still there, you know? You can claim something fell before or after another event, but you can’t really claim it didn’t fall. And you can’t claim two simultaneous events stopped being simultaneous if they’re stationary for you, so it’s less of a “truth is relative to ME! ME! ME!” and more of a “truth is relative to that speed”. It’s still an objective matter, not a subjective one.
Individual control of truth is a superpower. It definitely violates causality, it also isn’t what those people really mean by “truth is subjective”
so it’s less of a “truth is relative to ME! ME! ME!”
This, I think, is an argument that exists in your head only. An excellent example of relativity, if I’m being honest.
I don’t understand why subjectivity makes people so uncomfortable. Like, people would fight each other over the objectively correct temperature for the AC of their building if you let them—I just, I don’t get it.
This, I think, is an argument that exists in your head only.
This is blatantly false. The argument exists in the comment I wrote. If it existed only “inside my head”, you wouldn’t access it. Because nobody knows what’s “inside someone else’s head”, nor we (people in general) should lie = assume = bullshit otherwise.
An excellent example of relativity [SIC - subjectivity], if I’m being honest.
Also false. While I believe my argument is correct, there’s also the chance it’s incorrect. If it is correct, my belief is true. But if it is incorrect, it won’t magically become “true for ME! ME! ME!”; I’d be simply holding a false belief. But either way, that depends on the argument itself, not on the fact I’m the one voicing it or analysing it or whatever. The subject here (me) still doesn’t fucking matter. And that’s bloody common sense.
I don’t understand why subjectivity makes people so uncomfortable. [implied* by context: “relativity makes lvxferre uncomfortable”.]
Okay… first off, let me address the most pressing matter: in no moment you showed that this “truth is subjective” babble would be even remotely true.
Secondly. You’re making a bloody mess of “relativity” and “subjectivity”, as if both were synonymous. Get shit right dammit — subjectivity is a specific type of relativity regarding the subject. Showing time is relative to speed does jack shit to prove things would be relative to the subject, i.e. “gravity is false for me lol I’m jumping from the building!”.
Thirdly. Why are you bullshitting = assuming = lying about what I’m comfortable or not with? You have no way to know it, don’t lie you do. I’m not uncomfortable with subjectivity. I simply consider it such inane bullshit, that I’m outright mocking it. Just like I’d mock flat Earth, souls, zodiacal signs, aliens visiting Earth on weekends, et cetera.
Finally, drop off the Reddit style sealion: “I dun unrrurstand” followed by bullshit? Seriously, keep this shit in Reddit.
Like, people would fight each other over the objectively correct temperature for the AC of their building if you let them—I just, I don’t get it.
Gotta love assumptions…
Not wasting my time further with you.
*see Gricean maxims, specially the one of relevance.
Showing time is relative to speed does jack shit to prove things would be relative to the subject,
With this attitude, I just don’t feel like you’d be living up to Einstein’s manner of thinking. Just too rigid.
in no moment you showed that this “truth is subjective” babble would be even remotely true.
Uh. Subjectively, I think it’s true.
I really don’t think you even understand what I was trying to say with all that.
i.e. “gravity is false for me lol I’m jumping from the building!”.
Who is saying this?
If you jump out of a bridge, you will still break your face on the ground for every reference frame outside of a black hole.
I believe that’s true, yes. Your point?
I wonder if belief has anything to do with reality. Hmm.
Eh, probably the universe is a cold, dead clockwork of matter that spontaneously and randomly fell into place with only the barest of coincidences we can try to grasp as objective truths with which to define our sensationally complex environment.
Although . . . it is just as possible that matter arises from something more fundamental to something like a universal order, such as consciousness.
I dunno though, they never told me.
Eh, probably the universe is a cold, dead clockwork of matter
This, but unironically.
Spoilers: we’re riding some weird rock in the middle of the empty space.
Genuinely though, English seems to lack the distinction between truth (the absolute state of something being universally true), truth (something that is correct from some point of view) and truth (an idea someone is dedicated to).
Some other languages have different words for these “truths”. You could say that first is truth, second is perspective, and third is an idea, but all three can be named “truth”, which can easily spark a debate over simple misunderstanding of what you mean, exactly.
English has loads of words for the spectrum between fact and baseless claim, it’s just people have decided “truth” is contested, this is mostly that news on both sides of American politics report differently, producing often conflicting supposed facts, to the point where people say truth doesn’t matter anymore
People take that idea differently, from the sane end where it’s just the state of sectarian news through to the crazy end where they think nothing is real
Illustrative is one side of American political followers didn’t believe in COVID-19, the other side wore masks, avoided gatherings, and got vaccinated when vaccines became available
Truth opinion and belief
Factt opinion and belief. The word truth is a statement over belief of something.
I would argue that the first and third are perversions of the word. A truth that is universal should be called a law. Like the law of entropy. Unfortunately the word “law” has also ben twisted to mean legal policy. The third should be “belief,” as it is what you hold inside you. That too has been highjacked by religions to push their agenda.
English is a dogshit creole that also lacks distinction between libre and gratis and “cultural artist” and “visual artist” (Turkish : sanatkar v ressam)
English is not a creole language.
To keep it simple, a creole language originates from children learning a pidgin (a contact “language” with barely any grammar), and “gluing” the lexicon with features on the spot. To the point its grammar doesn’t resemble any of the parent languages over the course of, like, a single generation.
In the meantime English is simply a West Germanic language that got a bunch of borrowings from Old Norse and then Norman+French. Those borrowings don’t change affiliation.
Regarding the distinction between “libre” and “gratis”: it’s simply that “free” displaced “costless”. That sort of semantic shift happens, it’s most of the time internal (i.e. not caused by interference of other languages).
It does not at all lack the ability to distinguish between any of those things, it just doesn’t do so in single words
Truth is subjective.
Maybe you’re an empiricist, and you think seeing is believing. But how did you verify that your visual processing cortex is showing accurate data?
Maybe you’re a rationalist, and you think that logic can reason us towards objectivity. But syllogism requires premises. Premises require evidence or axioms. How did you choose your axioms?
Maybe you’re a conformist, and you think agreement with other people will correct errors in your individual perception. But other people are human too. How are you going to correct for errors in the collective genome? How do you know other people exist?
Donald Hoffman ran thousands of evolutionary simulations. He compared organisms that perceive the simulated world accurately with organisms that perceive only fitness payoffs. Fitness always beats truth. Truth always goes extinct. Your ancestors were the creatures that used hacks and oversimplifications to turn the complicated world around them into a simple mental model. That simple mental model is your perception of the universe.
There is no scientific definition of an object. What makes some molecules one object and not another? Human convenience of perception. You’re not even a single species. You have tiny bacteria in every cell of your body with their own separate genome, processing glucose into ATP for you. Not to mention bacteria such as firmicutes and bacteriodes that help your digestive system process food. And are you the body containing all of these different organisms, or just a pattern of neural impulses? If your brain were simulated by an advanced computer, copying the function of every neuron, would it be you?
It’s subjective.
What about gravity? It doesn’t exist, we just collectively hallucinate that stuff falls
That’s just nihilism.
Well I don’t believe matter or spacetime objectively exist, so I don’t think gravity objectively exists either. To borrow from Donald Hoffman’s language, I take gravity seriously but not literally. I know that gravity represents something which is important to our species’ survival, which is why we all perceive it. But I do not think it is as simple as we perceive it to be with our eyes. I do not think it is even as simple as Einstein described it. I think the truth is much, much more complicated.
That’s at least admitting that something exists, but it’s more complicated than what we currently understand of it!
My current standing is with “poetic naturalism”, in which we acknowledge that something exists and that we build, based on our subjective experience, models of knowledge. And that we must use epistemic tools (ex: the scientific method) to overcome our subjectivity.
There is no truth, only interpretations.
of what
It’s a quote from Nietzsche; which I think is becoming more true than truth itself the older I get.
Gödel , Escher, Bach, an eternal golden braid
Oh yeah. I remember attempting that. Lotta words in there.
Some say we live in a post-truth world. I say we live in a post-realism world. It’s not that objective reality vanished once this massive scale in ideological separation happened, it’s just that people stopped giving a fuck once it happened. Objective truth didn’t vanish though, most people just live without letting it inconvinience them.
Truth can be subjective, in one scenario: when it’s not the complete truth.
However an incomplete truth is via omission, thus making it a lie.
It’s only a lie if there’s intent to deceive. Mistakes are not lies and false memories are not lies.
However an incomplete truth is via omission, thus making it a lie.
Can an incomplete truth be not a lie if it’s incomplete, because the speaking person just doesn’t know the whole truth?
When you say something fully believing it, it is not a lie, regardless of factual/objective correctness.
And if you know that what you know isn’t the full truth, but still telling what you know and not revealing your suspicions?
